Chapter 3 #3
KimLuvsCats: I changed my DD’s diaper and saw the Devil’s tail.
AskMe: My husband came home and found me in the shower with baby bc I thought she was on fire.
NJM: I was convinced my arms were made of smoke and I couldn’t pick up my son.
InezP: Hi all. Had c--section and every time I saw scar I would start crying because I didn’t remember having a baby.
All of the women on the forum, like me, were given antidepressants.
All of the women on the forum, like me, immediately had a severe reaction—-feeling like their skin was peeling off, tearing out chunks of their own hair, feeling like electricity was pumping through their arteries.
AskMe: When you went to first postpartum visit, did the doc/nurse say you looked great?
KimLuvsCats: OMG THIS
AskMe: Pretty sure I was leaking milk and had not showered in a week.
InezP: Thought if I told the truth—-that I was up all night and my husband was never home and I was terrified and sad—-they’d take my baby away.
Some of the women have bipolar diagnoses. Some have depressive disorder. I read about different treatment plans—-which antipsychotics have made people feel sick or gain weight, which ones seem to work the best.
It strikes me that these women are the success stories, the ones who managed to get intervention and the right cocktails of drugs to guide them to stability.
The ones who didn’t are not posting on a forum like this.
They are in prisons and mental hospitals.
They don’t feel shame for what might have happened. They feel grief for what did.
Janie544: Topic: How did you get help?
AskMe: MIL brought me to ER and said she wouldn’t leave till I was committed.
NJM: Had a really good shrink who had seen PPP before.
KimLuvsCats: I was lucky; my mother had PPP so she was watching for the signs.
InezP: I wrote a note to my husband telling him that my son and I had to both die. I left it with my son’s teddy bear. I got the sharpest kitchen knife and was standing over the crib and I just . . . couldn’t. I ran to my best friend’s house, two miles away and told her what I’d almost done.
InezP: . . .
InezP: . . .
InezP: I guess at that moment, the will to live was stronger than the will to die.
I picture the stream of people, white with ash, staggering from the base of the Twin Towers. I see myself turning to swim with the current, instead of struggling against it.
I put my hands on my laptop keyboard and type.
GGinGA: So glad I found this forum.
The next weekend, I find Edward at the reference desk.
“I was hoping you’d come back,” he says, and he hands me a stack of articles and books tagged with Post--its.
“This guy,” he says, pointing to the article on top, “is the forensic psychiatrist who testified on behalf of Andrea Yates. But he’s been studying filicide forever. ”
“Filicide?”
“When a parent murders a child. He says one of the reasons is altruistic homicide—-a killing committed out of love, because the parent really believes that the child is suffering, or because the parent intends to commit suicide and the child will be left alone.” He winks at me. “Happy reading.”
I settle down at the same table I was at a week ago. Some of the comments resonate:
Altruistic homicide isn’t motivated by religion, but if the mother was raised in a religious way, the nature of her psychosis may have religious themes.
A woman can function normally while grocery shopping or chatting with a neighbor, and then be hallucinating mere hours later.
Because of that inconsistency, postpartum psychosis isn’t always recognized as mental illness.
Although some women, like Andrea Yates, suffered from depression for years, others who experience postpartum psychosis have no prior mental illness.
Affects one in five hundred women . . .
Five percent suicide rate . . .
Four percent infanticide rate . . .
Tied to a traumatic birth experience . . .
Increased incidence if a woman is bipolar or has a family history of bipolar . . .
Increased incidence if a woman’s mother had postpartum psychosis . . .
I lose track of time, becoming an armchair expert in an illness I barely survived. When I look up, Edward stands over me with a granola bar. “Hungry?”
“Thought food was off--limits in the library,” I say.
“Don’t tell the librarian.” His dimple appears, and it tugs at my center. I shove away the memory of another man’s features.
I open the granola bar and break it in half. “Care to join me for lunch?”
Edward sits down next to me. “These articles—-it’s devastating stuff.”
I nod, making sure my mouth is too full to respond.
“Do you mind me asking what you’re doing the research for? An article? A book?”
“Is the relationship between a librarian and patron like a doctor and patient?” I joke. “Confidential?”
To my surprise, Edward blushes. “I guess I’ve never thought about patrons in terms of relationships.”
I consider how honest I can be. “I lied to you about doing research,” I say. “Someone very close to me went through this. I want to understand it better.”
Edward meets my gaze. “I lied to you, too,” he replies. “I’ve never thought about patrons in terms of relationships . . . until now.”
On our first date, Edward takes me to see Man on Wire, a documentary about the aerialist who walked between the Twin Towers on a tightrope. It is the kind of movie theater that has art films and wine at the concession stand.
“Tell me something interesting about being a librarian,” I ask Edward while we are waiting for the movie to start.
“You pick up a lot of random information,” he says, smiling.
“Like?”
“Bookkeeper is the only word in the English language that has three consecutive sets of double letters.”
I am delighted by this fact. “What else?”
“Um . . . the state sport of Maryland is jousting. A rainbow on Venus is called a glory. Chain saws were invented in the 1700s by Scottish doctors to cut through bone during childbirth if the baby got stuck.”
“Do you just store these up for cocktail parties?” I ask.
He shrugs. “I don’t really go to cocktail parties.”
“Well, you should,” I counter. “It would make them much more interesting. Why on earth do people research these things?”
“Different reasons. Kids doing school projects, reporters doing background research.”
“Have you ever been stumped?” I ask.
“I’m only as good as the information out there,” Edward says. “It’s not like I can just make something up.”
For a moment, I falter. “Of course not,” I say.
The lights in the theater dim.
I reach into the popcorn bucket at the same moment he does. Edward tangles his fingers with mine, then pulls our joined hands out of the bucket to rest on his leg.
I understand why Man on Wire won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance.
Part actual footage of Petit’s preparation for the tightrope walk and part reenactment, it feels like you’re watching a Hollywood heist blockbuster, not a documentary.
After the movie, as Edward drives me home, he asks, “Have you ever been there? New York City?”
I hesitate, then shake my head.
“I went once for an ALA conference. I haven’t been back since 9/11, though.” His voice grows softer, reflective. “I can’t even imagine.”
“Me neither,” I murmur.
He pulls up outside my apartment. “I had a really nice time, Georgia,” Edward says.
“Me too.”
He reaches for my hand on the console. “I’ve got another fact, but it’s a little less random,” he says. “I’d really like to kiss you good night.”
My pulse accelerates. Finally, I nod.
He moves slowly, like he has seen a deer in the wild and doesn’t want to spook it. His lips are pillowy, the press of his mouth firm. He tastes like butter.
I have not been kissed for seven years, and the feeling of being wanted blooms riotously, a hothouse flower suddenly given the heat and light it needs to awaken.
I observe certain rituals. Every year on Adam’s birthday, I eat strawberry shortcake, because it was his favorite.
On Molly’s birthday, I go somewhere I would have wanted to take her: a playground, a children’s museum, a street fair.
On 9/11, I light a candle in a church, a different one each year. It is the only time I let myself pray.
And I listen to the recording of a phone call that was played in 2006 by prosecutors at the sentencing of Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person convicted in this country for having a role in the attacks.
Kevin Cosgrove was in the South Tower, on the phone with 911.
“Hello . . . we’re looking in . . . we’re overlooking the Financial Center.
Three of us. Two broken windows.” There is a roar, and Cosgrove’s scream: “Oh, God! Oh—-!” Then silence, as the South Tower collapses.
Once I heard a pundit on television say that the whole building collapsed in twelve seconds.
Imagine feeling like you’re on solid ground, then realizing it’s an illusion.
Edward and I start spending weekends together.
We go to the aquarium and the botanical garden and the zoo.
We eat out at sushi bars and mom--and--pop Italian restaurants; we take picnics to Piedmont Park; we cook pasta together in my kitchen.
Each time, he brings me a fact, like a raven carrying a shiny object to a potential mate: The average woman uses about her height in lipstick every five years.
A starfish doesn’t have a body; the whole thing is classified as a head.
You’re more likely to have a stroke on Monday than any other day of the week.
I have given Edward the same details of my assumed life that I’ve given Ximena, with one significant difference—-he doesn’t know about my bipolar disorder.
When he noticed the scars on my wrists, I told him that I had been in a car accident in my teens.
When he comes to my house, I hide my meds in a sock in a drawer.